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The world's gone mad etc - Boris Johnson mayor of London! (though I am no great fan of Ken)Apart from the bendy-bus issue, what are his transport policies? I recall that he used to write a motoring column (forget for whom, Old Etonian Weekly?) so perhaps he won't be as openly hostile to internal combustions as Ken was

Sold my car, bought a 125cc bike (the 500 was too expensive )Upside:98mpg, Ã‚Â£15 tax, Ã‚Â£50 insurance, cut 20 mile journey into work by a third, cut parking fees totally.Downside- not able to cart as much crap aboutNo Radio 4Cold & wet at times.Twats in BMW / Mercs / W plate Audi TT's who think that you should not be able to overtake just because you can and they cant.Gone back to being a 1 car family.

TBH so long as we get a sensible congestion charge and the sending of those f*cking 18 metre Merc bendy buses to Schipol airport where they belong I'm fairly happy, once that happens and Boris orders the new Routemasters that have been designed with hybrid electric motors specifically for UK cities we can all start a revolution and bring down government altogether after all property is theft and it doen't matter who you vote for, government always wins

Why does everyone seem to hate then?? I love Bendy Buses!! Reminds me of being little again and going on one with my Nan, I must have only been about 4 years old yet standing in the middle was an experience which has permanently burned on my memory. I don't think we were going any where in particular, it was just an excuse to go on one.Then for some reason they all disapeared. I doubt they could run the type they used to now because undoubtedly some halfwit would stick his fingers in between the rubber and the metal edge and sue the Bus company for Ã‚Â£3 Million.

I find the bendy buses a fugging irritation, & I'm glad I hardly ever take jobs in the smoke these days. Number of times I've nearly been squashed or had my (frighteningly expensive) theodolite squashed by one is frightening. Oh and my dear old nan (83 years young) got herself trapped in the door of one and dragged down the street by an inattentive driver. You'd not get that with Jack, Stan and a routemaster.

Oh and my dear old nan (83 years young) got herself trapped in the door of one and dragged down the street by an inattentive driver. You'd not get that with Jack, Stan and a routemaster.

No door on a Routemaster to start with!Bendy buses are a great idea in a modern "planned" city with wide streets (or an airport with no streets) - not in a medieval ramshackle mess of buildings and roads like London.

The thinking behind articulated buses was that they can load/unload much quicker than a Routemaster, therefore theoretically faster journey times - though latterly Ken was definitely going off the idea of buying more artics.On the other hand, there's less chance of seeing a re-designed Routemaster than Screaming Lord Sutch for PM.

I think people take Boris too literally when he talks about new Routemasters.

When I was in London a couple of years ago there were very few Routemasters (and what there was was in Stagecoach livery), most of the buses seemed to be spacious modern double deckers. A new Routemaster, if you will.

I remember when I visited my friend, when he was based in London, twice during 2002 and the Routemaster was at the height of its mini-revival, with some quite elderley examples in service, some ofwhich would have been bought back from preservationists.To show how much I love shite of all kinds, I remember my pal and I running up Oxford Street to catch a Golden-Jubilee liveried VLT6, which IIRC was Routemaster number 2?For real London bus shite though, I recommend a Gardner-engined Metrobus. Sorry for the hopeless reminiscing - is reference to 'bus shite' ok on here?

I think this is half the problem. People in the wrong places and the issue of 'dependency'.Think back a generation and there were still alot of folk without cars. Where I lived as a lad it was near a mile to the nearest shop of any variety, a mile to the village school down unlit, unpavemented roads, and a good trek to the post box, phone box & bus stop. Yet there were still plenty of families who managed just fine without a car. The work thing is interesting. I NEED transport due to the nature of my job (measuring far flung bits of countryside), no two ways about it really. However how many people -could- get by without I often wonder. I tried this hypothesis on the Domestic Manager the other day - it's 5 minutes walk to the station from here, 15 mins on the train and then a 10 minute walk t'other end. Total cost is about a fiver.However she would find this 'unacceptable': Ã‚Â£5 of diesel a day (then add tax, insurance, maintainance) and sitting in a traffic jam 40 minutes in the morning is OK though. How many of the other folk in that jam are doing exactly the same? Take my mate's wife for another example, drives 50+ miles a day to earn a tiny amount more than a local job would, surely the value threshold must have been crossed with the pump prices? Still does it though. So do hundreds of thousands of other drones. Yes, it is a ballache, yes it is a pain and yes it is hurting the wallets. But I do have the feeling that the populace are still looking at things arse about face. If you just had 'personal' mileage to travel, i.e. days out, holidays etc, wouldn't hurt at all that the fuel prices were high, though the tax would admittedly still be a bit of a fuquer.Retrogeezer: your post makes reference to the non-proximity of shops, station etc.... BUT you chose to live there - this is the bit that really gets me you see. We can elect to not be dependent by nature of where we pick to live.It's surely one of the key considerations when you put down roots. Isn't it?

overall I couldn't agree more.except for the last pargraph..are you advocating a countryside clearance like they did during the industrial revolution? without people living in a rural comunity there is no comunity = no local schools etc= no families....so who looks after the farms etc? we need diverstity to survive.not total urbasnisum

Arrrghhh ! All this talk of long distance commuting and such like and then....I have been 'asked' (although I can't actually refuse it seems...) to take over the running of another branch within our company as I have done so well here. Good news you might think? This other branch is in Liverpool meaning my daily commute goes from ten / fifteen minutes though the countryside to 1 hour + on the M6, M58 and bloody Liverpool city centre. I get fuel paid so its not going to kill me financially but fuggin hell, the time I'll get to spend in traffic Happy days

Happened to me - went from working in Chorley (& living just round the corner) to working all up the bloody coast to Fleetwood, Knott End and bloody Pilling because my lovely NHS contract says they can put me where the hell they want to so long as they give me a months notice - I get no petrol money for travel to & from work, so try and make it up on the buisnes miles if I can.....Thats about an hour and a half of my life every day gone.

I must admit that I am lucky in that my commute to the office is 17 miles - 15 minutes on A-roads, with minimal disruption due to traffic and junctions. Therefore a tankful of DERV lasts me about a month, normally. Will probably move closer if I stay here...as long as we avoid living in the concrete monolith that is Basingstoke proper.I'm also lucky enough to be able to use the car for business mileage, which currently is entailing semi-regular trips to Solihull, Leeds and Bradford @ 40p/mile. Although I tend to hide the 405 out of sight when I get there...

because my lovely NHS contract says they can put me where the hell they want to so long as they give me a months notice

Thats my problem entirely. Contract says I can be moved from my current location (Accrington) and moved wherever they want.

Still, I have got them to agree that I don't have to work quite as many hours so thats something at least. I'm told that if I really hate it I can move back after three months though quite how likely that is who knows.

Ho hum. Think I might be looking for a new job earlier than I had planned...

I'm told that if I really hate it I can move back after three months though quite how likely that is who knows.

Well I got the three month guff off my boss - that was 5, nearly 6 years ago. Since then 9-5(ish) Mon -Fri nursing jobs in and around Chorley = bog all
So, still up the coast. On the plus side the hours are good and at least the wife no longer commutes, plus we live in a smallish town with good shops and transport links - just a crap council, but hey cant have everything.

I was thinking about the "live further from work for a cheaper mortgage" concept - just not possible here. Take the average modernish 3 bed house - Ã‚Â£450k worth at the mo. Mortgage will therefore cost you well over a mill, depending on term/deposit. Frightening, and enough to make me consider that I'd be better off renting. Except people keep pointing out to me that in (say) 30 years time, if you extrapolate historical RPI/house price trends, that same 3 bed house will be worth in the region of Ã‚Â£3.5m...

On the other hand, there's less chance of seeing a re-designed Routemaster than Screaming Lord Sutch for PM.[/quote]As the aforementioned Mr Sutch is now dead, you're probably right! Given that the esteemed Mr Livingstone doesn't have a driving licence, his hatred of the car was no great shock. His cynical manipulation of traffic light phasing, and the total lack of co-ordination when it comes to roadworks meant that the congestion charge could be "justified". I don't think that Boris is going to be able to cure the problem, the only way you could do that is to flatten what is basically a city that has most of it's road origins left over from 1603 , and start again.Not that we have anything [Jersey] to crow about when it comes to road planning. One of our esteemed politicains approved a Ã‚Â£1 million road improvement that has now resulted in a bottle neck at the end of a dual carriageway, without enough space for emergency services to get through without mounting the pavement.

For real London bus shite though, I recommend a Gardner-engined Metrobus. Sorry for the hopeless reminiscing - is reference to 'bus shite' ok on here?

Ooo yes, I was very dismayed on two recent trips to London since the turn of the year that every old bus seemed to have been 'done away with'. Everything was shiny & new! I thought it was just the Routemasters they had a problem with? The others have been in service 30 years or more but why get rid of them now? I really miss the London MCW Metrobuses & Leyland Titans. My nan used to live in Barnet & you could close your eyes but know you were there by the drone of the MCW Metrobuses, which mostly huddled at Potters Bar garage when not in use. Those buses were such a comfort to me, reminding me of my childhood visits to London. Really significant. Sniff!.... Of course bus shite is acceptable, people talk about allsorts on here, the policy is anything goes. Anything shite that is, in one way or another.